Nottingham - pitched at 90 then chilled?

[Psych]

Funny how even when you know you shouldn't pitch at 90, in the moment you can panic and just do it then immediately regret it...

I had an about-to-expire pack of Nottingham so thought for yesterday's batch I would hydrate it in advance. I had about 3.5 gallons of wort in my 5g pot, coming off the boil. Threw that in my sink ice bath and knew it would take a while. I foolishly started hydrating the yeast too soon though, the wort was still at like 160F or so when I sprinkled the yeast onto 10x it's volume of 35c water as per the instructions. Instructions said give it 15 minutes like that, then gently stir, leave for 5 minutes and immediately pitch. So that's what I did...

Problem was my wort, after adding to the primary and then topping off the remaining 1.5 gallons with cold water only got down to 90 or 92F. I panicked, added the yeast in, stirred 'er up and set it in my 68F room.

Panicked some more, and about an hour later I moved it over to my beer fridge which was at about 32F or so. In the next four hours it dropped the primary down to 65F so I took it out and moved it back to the 68F room. Something had happened in that four hour time frame, maybe fermentation, maybe something else? It looked like really soupy thick bumpy runny yeast on top, a layer all over about 1/8 inch thick. Looked gross, but this is my first time using re-hydrated yeast, maybe this is normal?

This morning (16 hours after pitching, 10 hours or so after coming out of the fridge) I have a thicker layer of that goop. So something is definitely happening but man does it look sick. Like a 1/2 inch layer of everything of bumpy wet looking skuzz.

Hate to be that guy, but: did I save it or did I break it?

 

[bruin_ale]

RDWHAHB...

Couple things.. yeah, the rehydration says to pitch immediately - but you can pitch it when you're ready. It's not going to hurt anything to leave the rehydrated yeast for a little while longer.

The other, pitching at 90 isn't ideal - but it's not going to kill the yeast. Fermentation looks gross, rehydrated yeast looks like mud. Give it some time, it'll be fermenting away very soon.

 

[Grinreaper]

I did something like this with Nottingham yeast. Topped off my wort with cold water and forgot to mix it so thermometer showed a little bit higher temp. So i pitched and noticed that when i mixed,temp dropped under 20 c. Left it at room temp and it was all ok. Weird thing is i did get a very tiny fermentation kraussen and next day,none was left on top. Co2 was still being made so fermentation was still active. Still one more week till it's ready.

I don't know if this was caused by the sugar added to replace the .5 kg of DME of the total of 1.5kg light DME(i used dark DME).

 

[ThreeDogsNE]

The goop sounds like developing krauzen like I've seen with Notty. It is after all a top-fermenting ale yeast. The heat stress may have set you back some on cell count, and the nearly expired date may also point that direction. Underpitching will influence ester production and the subsequent flavor profile. If you were hoping to win a competition with this batch, you may have to wait for the next batch to get it just right. If you were hoping to make a drinkable beer, you should be fine.

 

[Psych]

Yep looks like everything went on as normal, just had a bit more of a delay. By day 2 I had some white krausen fluffing up and it's since gotten fairly high. Starting to drop a bit now, temps in the bucket went from 64 to 68 currently.

 

[azscoob]

The goop sounds like developing krauzen like I've seen with Notty. It is after all a top-fermenting ale yeast. The heat stress may have set you back some on cell count, and the nearly expired date may also point that direction. Underpitching will influence ester production and the subsequent flavor profile. If you were hoping to win a competition with this batch, you may have to wait for the next batch to get it just right. If you were hoping to make a drinkable beer, you should be fine.

Yes the cell count likely suffered, and you will also get some ester production from the lower yeast numbers, as for not winning a comp because of weak yeast, I just won the HBT comp final round in category 11 with a beer I brewed using a packet of Notty that expired in 2006. Made a great beer! and I didn't even rehydrate it, just pitched it in dry.

 

[dinertime]

For comparison's sake, when baking bread with 'active dry yeast', you are supposed to rehydrate with water that is 100-110 F. Obviously different strains of yeast, but it's all S. cerevisiae, and so temps even that high clearly don't kill them.

My bet is that you actually got no change in cell count at the higher temperatures, especially since it was only an hour or so at that temp, and if anything just a reduced lag time before the cells started to divide.

 

[beerkrump]

+1 for excess esters. Notty no like warm wort.

It'll be beer, don't worry about that. It'll probaly have lots of fruity under tones that a warm fermentation leaves.

What type of beer is it?

 

[Psych]

This is a brown porter, or that's the intention at least. I know the yeast isn't maybe what I should be using for that style, but it was on hand so I thought what the heck...

 

[beerkrump]

It's really not the wrong yeast, just not the best temperature to pitch. It should be fine as the maltiness of a brown ale will hide some imperfections.

 

[Psych]

Just as an update, because when I happen across these sort of "oh lord what did I do, am I going to lose my batch?!" threads it's nice to see updates:

This beer has turned out deeeeeeeeLICIOUS! Smooth and smokey, it's like a very baby guiness (very baby...), really enjoy it. I can't pick out any dominant fruity esters or anything out of place, it's almost silky and when served a little warmer than fridge temp it's fantastic. Carbed up well over the past two weeks since bottling.

The only annoying thing is the yeast particulates that I accidentally sucked into the bottling bucket due to a shoddy valve on my auto-siphon suddenly sucking air in and me freaking out. Each bottle has a bunch of it in there, flakes of yeast/trub/something. It doesn't want to stick to the bottom of the bottles, but thankfully sticks to the glass bottom when I pour. I have YET to pour one properly, without any yeasty flakes in it. Oh well, can't taste it just looks nasty at the bottom.

Everything worked out a-ok though, whew!

 

[brad26]

I wouldn't worry about it. I pitch my yeast at 80 to 85 degrees and put them in the basement to finish cooling. My brews turn out great. Never had the patience to wait for it to drop in the 60s before pitching.

 

[TheSlash]

I wouldn't worry about it. I pitch my yeast at 80 to 85 degrees and put them in the basement to finish cooling. My brews turn out great. Never had the patience to wait for it to drop in the 60s before pitching.

Well that shoots my off flavor ideas in the foot. GRRRRRRR. I figured pitching at 75-80 and fermenting at 60 was doing it...

Guess not..